Search

Gillick made his next big move, trimming the bullpen by dealing Aquilino Lopez from the club. He sent him packing to the San Diego Padres for minor leaguers Matt Thayer and Trey Johnston. Neither of them is inspiring much out of me(short outlook below). Lopez pitched pretty well down the stretch for the Phils, with a 2.13 ERA and 16 Ks in 12.2 IP. However, he did give up a ton of baserunners, about 1.58 an inning. I hadn't noticed him giving up that many baserunners, but it seems that he gave up 6 baserunners in 2 innings in a blowout win against the Marlins, and also 4 baserunners during the win against the Reds where David Bell hit a 9th inning game winner. I still say that he could've been a valuable piece of the bullpen puzzle, and certainly couldn't do any worse than oldheads Rheal Cormier or Arthur Rhodes.

Trey Johnston is a 20 yr old 3B(18th rounder in 2003 by the Cubs) who hit 243/338/338 in 262 atbats in the minors thus far. This is now his 3rd team. He will probably go to low A Lakewood. He did have a good 20 games last year at the end of the year in low A compiling a 973 OPS, but looks like he missed some time due to injury.

Matt Thayer is a 24 yr old OF(31st rounder in 2004) who has hit 314/406/420 with gap power. In two years he's had 388 AB thus far. He's slated for high A Clearwater or probably should skip to AA Reading to challenge him if he's going to try to make it to the majors. Who knows what he can actually do, though. Looks like he has a little speed too, netting 18 steals over the past 2 years. Maybe he can turn into a bench player or some trade bait, he had a pretty good overall OPS(888) last year.

Thanks to Dan, for creating a good photo tour of George Mason University, the upset special from Washington DC which is in the NCAA Final Four. Average campus, nothing too special, but George the patriot himself is all gussied up for the tourney (and yes, I wrote gussied). Click on Georgie for the tour:

Well, the newest Phillies rumor is that they are offering Geoff Geary to Texas Rangers OF David Dellucci. Dellucci is a good on-base man and has some good power, but the Phils already have a lot of outfielders. This search for a supposed 5th outfielder seems futile when they already had a guy which they could’ve cheaply kept in Jason Michaels. The guy got on-base at 38% clip over the past 3 years and made sure that every at-bat was hard fought. And so we traded him to Cleveland for a soon to be over the hill reliever Arthur Rhodes. Now, I understand that Philly cops were understandably upset about Michaels’ hitting a cop, but the hypocrisy of the Phils’ morality is pretty apparent when the Phils signed a steroid abuser like Ryan Franklin. Apparently it’s OK to flaunt only certain laws, and you don’t have to even be a good player you just had to have been on an old Gillick team(the Seattle Mariners).

We are mulling trading a reliever who started to really get it together last year, and is having one of the better springs on the team for a guy who we essentially already had in Michaels. It seems like we created a hole only to try and fill it later so that we could say that we indeed filled that hole.

Jeopardy is finally allowing online entries starting today…welcome to this thing called the inter-nets, Alex.

Apparently the White Sox must've had some kind of 'plan' or something when they dealt Aaron Rowand to the Phils, because they have something called 'prospects' that they are using in his place.

Reading has a great soccer team that is has clinched an uprade to a new league!!!!! Well, not Reading, PA, but their sister city Reading, UK. Kudos, guys! Now tell me what the hell any of this crap means????

Marc Narducci says the Sixers are struggling, and does he blame Billy King, Mo Cheeks, Chris Webber, John Salmons, or anybody who is actually being detrimental to the team? No, he is decides to blame Allen Iverson, telling him to step it up from his horrible 33pts, 8 assists and 45% shooting. Shame Allen, shame.